Honestly Stormblood was a very weird expansion, especially compared to the immadiately preceding Heavensward.

It starts in a new zone of Eorzea, Ala Mhigo, and then in the middle of the worldbuilding the characters decide to leave to save the other part of the world, finally to go back to where it all started and start the rush to the ending (pre-updates).

Aside from the sudden end I actually enjoyed the little bit in Ala Mhigo at the start of the expansion, it puts you directy in the mood of Stormblood with all the talks of war, resistance, imperials ecc. It even shows for the first time the new main antagonist.

In general the game gives you too many of sidequests to do though, and that picks too much more time compared to doing only the main quests. Yeah even in HW was like that but honesty i didn't feel it as tiring as in SB, i'm sure there the sidequests were a little bit less or maybe there was a better "balancing" from useless fetch quests and actually interesting ones. Btw this problem with the sidequests is through all the expansion so i will not mention it again from now on.

After the first part of Ala Mhigo we go to Doma, passing first through Kugane (until now the best city of ffxiv). This second part of the expansion does't have a weird cut in the middle and it's actually better from the first one.

Essentially we go from Kugane all the way to the new region, and during the plot there's a lot of worldbuilding that explains all the stuff going on there. I especially liked the Azim Steppe part, with all the different clans and cultures. From what i heard this half of the game was written by the same writer of Shadowbringers, so i hope for that one.

Aside from the worldbuilding, in this second part of the game I actually didn't liked all that much the general plot. Gosetsu and Hien were not very interesting for me and Yotsuyu didn't have much time to devolop, aside from one little flashback from the echo.

The final third of Stormblood was like i said a little rushed, we return to Ala Mhigo and essentially run to the ending while some characters die and all the focus go to Lyse for some to reason. Actually most of the plot is focused to Lyse and sometimes it feels just weird, like the writers are trying hard to develop the character but they don't make it.

The ending (like i said pre-updates) was somehow funny instead, i liked the main antagonist even though he didn't get much development. I don't think the ending was planned to be funny, not really, but i enjoyed it anyway.

These are pretty much my thoughts on the main story, but then as always it continues with the updates in a more freely way we can say, without all the sidequests every two main quests. Here the plot gets better, after some quests though, when we get to Doma again. The focus goes to Yotsuyu at a certain point and we learn more things, i liked her more here.

After the updates for some reason there's a overuse of the echo though, with all the random flashbacks that appear when it's more convenient for the plot. I really hated that, i hope it gets better in the next expansions. Btw the final quests are all the buildup to Shadowbringers and are cool as fuck, even more hype now.

Ok so in general i didn't like the story that much, we can summarize in "Doma > Ala Mhigo" but even the Doma part has some flaws, the peak is clearly the worldbuilding anyway.

Speaking of gameplay instead... that is a lot better even compared to Heavensward, some dungeons and trials are incredible especially in post-game. I liked a lot the Tenzen quests, the Ivalice and Omega raids a little less but there were cool fights there too. Even the single player fights are a loooot better, we actually die here if we don't pay attention. The soundtrack is always a banger but i still prefer the HW one.

That's it, in summary it's a great game but it was unlucky to be in the middle of HW and ShB, when you finish ARR and arrive at HW it'a huge step forward, here it's a little disappointing to lower again in terms of plot but the new dungeons and trials help.